Ehud Kalai | |
|---|---|
 Kalai in 2007 | |
| Born | (1942-12-07)December 7, 1942 (age 82) |
| Nationality | American and Israeli |
| Academic career | |
| Field | Game theory andeconomics |
| Contributions | "Citations". |
| Information atIDEAS / RePEc | |
Ehud Kalai is a prominentIsraeli Americangame theorist andmathematicaleconomist known for his contributions to the field ofgame theory and its interface witheconomics,social choice,computer science andoperations research. He was the James J. O’Connor Distinguished Professor of Decision and Game Sciences atNorthwestern University, 1975–2017, and currently is a Professor Emeritus of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences.
Born inMandatory Palestine on December 7, 1942, Kalai moved to the US in 1963. He received his AB in mathematics from theUniversity of California Berkeley (1967) and an MS (1971) and a PhD (1972) in statistics and mathematics fromCornell University. After serving as an assistant professor of statistics atTel Aviv University (1972–1975), he was hired byNorthwestern University to establish a research group in game theory. He is the founding director of the Kellogg Center of Game Theory and Economic Behavior and the executive director of theNancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture series.
Kalai is the founding Editor ofGames and Economic Behavior, the leading journal in game theory. With Robert J. Aumann, Kalai founded theGame Theory Society and served as its president from 2003 to 2006. He is a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, of theEconometric Society,[1] was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Doctorat Honoris Causa) by the University of Paris at Dauphine (2010), the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar position at theCalifornia Institute of Technology (1993), and was appointed theOskar Morgenstern Research Professor atNew York University (1991).[2]
Since 2008, theGame Theory Society has awarded theKalai Prize for outstanding papers at the interface ofgame theory andcomputer science. The prize was named after Kalai in recognition of his contributions to bridging these two fields.[3]
In cooperative game theory, theKalai-Smorodinsky solution reopened the study of bargaining by showing that the long unchallengedNash solution is not unique. He later axiomatized theEgalitarian solution to bargaining problems and, with Dov Samet, formulated its extension to general (NTU) cooperative games, unifying it with the Shapley (TU) Value.
In non cooperative game theory, the Kalai and Lehrer model ofrational learning showed that rational players with truth-compatible beliefs eventually learn to playNash equilibria of repeated games. In particular, in Bayesian equilibria of repeated games all relevant private information eventually becomes common knowledge. Kalai's work onlarge games showed that the equilibria ofBayesian games with many players are structurally robust, thus large games escape major pitfalls in game-theoretic modeling.
Kalai is also known for seminal collaborative research onflow games and totally balanced games;strategic complexity and its implications in economics and political systems;arbitration, strategic delegation and commitments; extensions of Arrow’sImpossibility Theorem in social choice;competitive service speed in queues; and on rationalstrategic polarization in group decision making.
Cooperative Game Theory
"Other Solutions to Nash's Bargaining Problems,"Econometrica, 1975 (with M. Smorodinsky)
"Proportional Solutions to Bargaining Situations: Interpersonal Utility Comparisons,"Econometrica, 1977
"Monotonic Solutions to General Cooperative Games,"Econometrica, 1985 (with D. Samet)
Non cooperative Game Theory
"Finite Rationality and Interpersonal Complexity in Repeated Games,"Econometrica, 1988 (with W. Stanford)
"Rational Learning Leads to Nash Equilibrium,"Econometrica, 1993 (with E. Lehrer)
“Large Robust Games,”Econometrica, 2004
Probability and Learning
"Bayesian Representations of Stochastic Processes Under Learning: deFinetti Revisited,"Econometrica, 1999 (with M. Jackson and R. Smorodinsky)
Economics
"The Kinked Demand Curve, Facilitating Practices, and Oligopolistic Coordination," 1986 Northwestern DP (with M. Satterthwaite; published by Kluwer, 1996))
"Observable Contracts: Strategic Delegation and Cooperation,"International Economic Review, 1991 (with C. Fershtman and K. Judd)
"Complexity Considerations in Market Behavior,"The RAND Journal of Economics, 1993 (with C. Fershtman)
Social Choice
"Aggregation Procedure for Cardinal Preferences: A Formulation and Proof of Samuelson's Impossibility Conjecture,"Econometrica, 1977 (with D. Schmeidler)
"Characterization of Domains Admitting Non-Dictatorial Social Welfare Functions and Non-Manipulable Voting Procedures,"Journal of Economic Theory, 1977 (with E. Muller)
"Path Independent Choices,"Econometrica, 1980 (with N. Megiddo)
Operations Research / Computer Science
"Totally Balanced Games and Games of Flow,"Mathematics of Operations Research, 1982 (withE. Zemel)
"Optimal Service Speeds in a Competitive Environment,"Management Science, 1992 (with M. Kamien and M. Rubinovitch)
“Partially-Specified Large Games,”Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005
Mathematical Psychology
"Strategic Polarization,"Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 2001 (with A. Kalai)
